This is an unremittingly bad story. An LSU fan was stupid enough to drink himself senseless in a public place and evidently didn’t have even a single friend willing to look out for him.  An mob of stupid Alabama fans assaulted him – putting trash on him and even teabagging him.  In fact, they were so stupid that they filmed their crimes and posted them on the internet.

Next, the New Orleans police department – with actual video of a sex crime in their possession- stupidly decided they couldn’t investigate unless the victim stepped forward.

Let’s do a little thought experiment. Let’s imagine that this was a girl who drank herself stupid. Let’s imagine that she was touched, her breasts were fondled, and that a man rubbed his genitals on her while she was unconscious.  Can anyone imagine the NOPD – or any police department, anywhere – dragging their heels on investigating unless she came forward?

Dale Standifer, of the Metropolitan Center for Women and Children, summed it up:

“The man was obviously passed out, intoxicated and unable to defend himself, and he was assaulted,” Standifier said. “He was sexually assaulted, and humiliated and tormented while people cheered, and he shouldn’t have to stand up for himself and say, ‘I want to press charges.’ The city should be pressing charges and trying to move forward. If you had a murder victim, you can’t expect the victim himself, the corpse, to testify.”

Just as women’s domestic abuse against men is routinely blown off, it certainly appears that the police are willing to overlook a sexual crime against a man. Sure, everyone involved was an idiot. And maybe their reasoning is that idiocy should not be prosecuted. But if the victim were a woman, they wouldn’t hesitate, and the law needs to be enforced equally. As The Hayride put it (and click through to read the applicable criminal code),

This isn’t Gumps Gone Wild. It’s sexual battery. You can get 10 years for that, and it’s not acceptable for the cops not to ID this perp and bring his ass in for trial.

Added: Dr. Helen writes:

Given the way that our society laughs and mocks men who are abused in this way, I can understand the guy not coming forward, but he must. It is only when individual men start to say “No, this is not justice for all” and endure the ridicule that men everywhere will no longer have to endure their rights and bodies being violated in this absurd manner without consequence.

More on this at my post at Hot Air’s Green Room.

UPDATE: It turns out this is not a college prank in any sense of the word. Brian Downing, the man Deadspin identified as the teabagger is in his 30s, married, with a child.  And at the moment he is on his way – with his attorney – to New Orleans to have a little chat with the NOPD. I’m sorry for his family, but I’m glad that it’s looking like there will be some consequences for his behavior.  And what little amusement there is in this whole train wreck can be found in the fact that the tips identifying Downing apparently originated on an Auburn message board.

I’m not a big football fan – at least, not American football. Australian football, which is kind of like a crazy hybrid of rugby, basketball, soccer and football, is what I really get excited about. And my team is, ironically, the Saints. That is, St. Kilda.  Still, I have to jump on the New Orleans Saints bandwagon at times like this or I may be evicted from New Orleans.  So I’m definitely rooting for them.  Also, here, have a Drew Brees video on prayer:

Apart from all that – here’s my latest at Hot Air’s Green Room. If it’s not the government trying to crack down on internet freedom with SOPA/PIPA, it’s the media.  I can understand where they’re so upset. [Read more...]

We count illegal aliens in the census, and that is a good thing because we need to know just how many people are here illegally. But we should not count them for the purposes of apportioning Congressional districts. Because the federal government did just that, several states including Louisiana lost seats in the House. This week, Louisiana’s Attorney General Buddy Caldwell filed suit in the Supreme Court to get that seat back.

It’s not just the loss of a House district. Louisiana vs. Bryson (that’s John Bryson, Obama’s controversial Secretary of Commerce) points out that with the loss of the House district comes a reduction in electoral college votes.  As Lyle Denniston writes at Scotusblog:

The result of these disparities, Louisiana said, is that the votes of its citizens are worth less “in terms of electoral power” than in a state like California, with a large population of undocumented aliens.  Here is how that comes about, according to Louisiana’s lawsuit: a state with a small population of illegal aliens winds up with a greater proportion of eligible voters per district, because fewer of its residents are deducted from the voting population.  The state illustrated the point with these figures: 748,160 voting-age individuals in Louisiana will elect a Representative in each district in the state, while only 656,452 Californians are needed to elect a member of the House in each district in that state.  That is a nearly 14 percent decrease in Louisiana’s electoral power, the state said.

While the trend has been to move from labels like “illegal alien” to “illegal immigrant” and “undocumented immigrant” or even “migrant” this lawsuit puts the issue into sharp relief by identifying them as “Non-Immigrant Foreign Nationals.”  The case will decide whether we have the right to exclude non-citizens from our political calculations.  If we’re going to count them for those purposes, granting non-citizens voting rights is just a small step from there.

Crossposted.

No, the headline doesn’t refer to my perplexity that Nicholas Kristof  just now figured out that a whole lot of people are unemployed.  I think he just transferred over from that universe where Spock has a goatee.  But I digress. What the headline refers to is this comment from the Kristof article, which as of this writing was recommended by 43 other NYT readers:

What is even more incredible that no one speaks up, points the finger, and acknowledges that what’s cost us all those jobs is computers. Millions, billions of types of work, especially clerical, gone forever thanks to computers. The billionaires introduce the computer and no one provides the method by which all those people displaced by it are to now get work. Why is this such a big problem now? Because it’s been going on for 30 years and no one has taken responsibility for solving it. I could solve it, but I don’t have the power. Where are those in power (which includes high-flying journalists) on this? By the way, the billionaires, who should be run out of the country, have been sitting back, laughing, and eating cake.

woowoo27

Toronto

August 27th, 2011

6:03 pm

Yes, okay, woo is a Canadian and what do you expect, eh? But it’s an astonishing comment nonetheless.  Does woo think Kristof’s article just magically sprang into existence on his/her/its screen?  Has woo stopped to consider the process it took – the factories where people worked to create the computer, the offices where people worked to created the software that runs it, the miles of cables that were run and the labor of the thousands of people that it took to bring that drivel to his/her/its screen and enable him/her/it to respond with even more drivel?

No.  Because woo is a moron. And while I am thankful that woo at least can’t vote here, I can’t rest easy because at least some of woo’s 43 supporters surely can.  That’s how we got into this handbasket.